The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a storage medium, and a program. More particularly, the invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a storage medium, and a program for use with equipment that handles electronic books.
Electronic books composed of text data are coming into general use today. Traditional paper books with printed text information are getting taken over in part by their electronic counterparts whose text data are displayed on an electronic book display terminal in a double-page spread format. Operating on a suitable button of the terminal feeds text images one page at a time and gives readers the impression that a paper book is spread out before their eyes and its pages are being turned.
The places where electronic books can be bought are not limited to bookstores. It has been proposed that electronic books be marketed and purchased in the form of data over a network such as the Internet. One such proposal is disclosed in Japanese patent Laid-open No. 2002-245265 (on pages 3 and 4 in particular).
Purchasing an electronic book over the network is convenient especially when one can do so at home or from other appropriate locations. This, however, entails some inconveniences. Electronic books aside, a user may wish to read an article “a” from a magazine A and an article “b” from a magazine B. In that case, the user must purchase the whole magazines A and B including all unwanted articles and stories (i.e., those other than the articles “a” and “b”).
That wholesale purchase required of users (readers) is unduly expensive from their point of view. The unwanted expenditures are likely to dampen the readers' willingness to purchase more books or magazines, which often results in poor business for publishers.
In electronic books and magazines alike, articles or stories may or may not be arranged in the sequence preferred by a given user. That is because the sequence of articles and stories is fixed when a magazine composed thereof has been edited and finished for publication; users' preferences are almost never reflected in the sequence of these articles or stories. In reading electronic magazines, the reader is required to turn all intervening pages to arrive at each of the desired articles, which can be a bothersome chore. The inconvenience is all the more pronounced if there are more articles involved with many more pages; the user must wade through the bewildering arrays of articles before reaching a preferred story.